The Stories I Write

As part of a discipleship initiative at our Church in Nacogdoches, FirstNac UMC, I was asked to contribute to daily devotions which are emailed to visitors and members of FirstNac, as well as posted every day on social media platforms. These devotions include a scripture passage, a teaching based on the passage by a member of the church, and a reflection and prayer written by one of several contributors, also church members. In the past nine months that I have been writing these reflections, I have found that I enjoy the challenge of being assigned scriptural passages that are, alternately, and sometimes altogether, unfamiliar, opaque, beautiful, sad, and perplexing.  What follows is one such passage I was assigned through the course of this initiative, along with my reflection on its words and stories as they speak to me.  John 19:38-42 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish ...

As part of a discipleship initiative at our Church in Nacogdoches, FirstNac UMC, I was asked to contribute to daily devotions which are emailed to visitors and members of FirstNac, as well as posted every day on social media platforms. These devotions include a scripture passage, a teaching based on the passage by a member of the church, and a reflection and prayer written by one of several contributors, also church members. In the past nine months that I have been writing these reflections, I have found that I enjoy the challenge of being assigned scriptural passages that are, alternately, and sometimes altogether, unfamiliar, opaque, beautiful, sad, and perplexing.  What follows is one such passage I was assigned through the course of this initiative, along with my reflection on its words and stories as they speak to me. Originally posted February 21, 2024, one week after Ash Wednesday Ephesians 2:1-10 (NIV) As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which...

This week is World Breastfeeding Week, and so it finally feels like the right time to share a post that I've been shying away from for months now.  In part, I’ve been putting off writing this because life is busy. Constant. It’s 3 kids with a million questions, needs, problems, schemes,  and feelings every hour. Each. In part, it’s moving into a new house 6 months ago and trying each day to make it a bit more like home. In part, it’s being present in the life of a vibrant church where my husband is the pastor and all the joys, heartaches, and celebrations it brings. And all the other excuses, whether valid or otherwise. In part, this is still raw for me, even after 7 months.  Every morning when I open my top dresser drawer to choose clothes for the day, my eyes always light on a small collection of undergarments that still lay there, although their usefulness has since passed. Occasionally, I still select one to wear because they are “more comfortable” or “I don’t want to...

Today, my husband and I were talking about Christmas. Specifically, Christmas 2020, and I came to the sudden realization that, for once, it didn’t seem as though we had “just put all the decorations away,” and yet were about to put them back up like it often does in our busy lives. In fact, I could barely remember Christmas 2019. It seemed like another life, or at least another century. Just one more casualty of 2020. I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of writing, having hardly written at all in the past year. And I’ve got ALL the excuses: 3 kids, the youngest of which turned one a couple of weeks ago and has just tentatively started sleeping through the night; my middle child just *finally* triumphed over potty training after a grueling six month battle; general exhaustion by the end of the evening once the kids are asleep. Definitely too tired to make my thoughts make sense in a meaningful way.  Then I realized that my biggest hurdle isn’t truly any of these things. It i...

Amidst the discomfort and strangeness that has become our every day, I sort of hate to write something melancholy, but I wrote the title to this post over two weeks ago after a trip to our public library and it’s still on my heart. Turns out that trip was to be our last visit to the library for an undetermined amount of time, and that makes this even sadder to me somehow. My earliest clear memory of a library is of the one in my elementary school, Southwood Valley Elementary. Posters of award-winning books decorated the walls, tables were in the middle of the stacks for classes to sit at during instruction. There was this awesome loft you got to by climbing a ladder. Up there, I remember brightly colored floor cushions and wooden racks of Highlights Magazine. Besides coming here with my class to check out books, we sometimes had instruction from the librarian. This was the first place I learned about Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his fruitless search for the Seven Cities of Gold. I...

Today my husband came home from work with an opened letter in his hand and an irritated look on his face. I gave him a questioning look through the storm door as he walked toward the house. It was a letter from our daughter’s school. With some apprehension I read the first few lines.  It stated that Gemma had three unexcused absences so far this school year. It went on to lecture us about the importance of attendance and securing doctor’s notes when your child is sick, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: she’s just in kindergarten, it’s not a big deal if she misses sometimes. But Andrew and I both had the same reaction to the letter. We were offended, because we try extremely hard to get her to school every day that we possibly can and neither of us thought this was entirely accurate record keeping. After reviewing the dates she had missed, we came to a conclusion: the first absence, back in October, was the day after Izzy, her new baby sister, was...